Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED)
Our initiative is a public health incubator, designed to cultivate novel insights and strategies for prevention. We introduce trainees to a rich array of disciplinary perspectives, methodologies, and theories and provide them with opportunities to join crosscutting collaborative teams.
Protecting Fashion Model Health
STRIPED and community partners Model Alliance and National Eating Disorders Association worked with California Assemblymember Marc Levine to protect the safety, health, and wellbeing of models, and change the messages girls and young women receive about what our society values.
California AB 2338
The Talent Protections Act (California AB 2338), introduced by Assemblymember Marc Levine, was signed by California Governor Brown in September 2018! It puts into place protections for professional models working in California against sexual harassment and also to address eating disorders by providing education on eating disorders to adult models. STRIPED worked in collaboration with Model Alliance and Assemblymember Levine’s office to garner support for this bill. The eating disorders community, including STRIPED, the Academy for Eating Disorders (AED), Eating Disorders Coalition (EDC), and many advocates, also rallied in support of the bill, sending letters to Gov. Brown urging him to sign the bill.
Read the press release here and get more information on the legislation.
See STRIPED’s letter of support for AB 2338 here.
California AB 2539
Through an exciting academic-community-government partnership, STRIPED worked with the National Eating Disorders Association, Model Alliance, and Assemblymember Marc Levine to introduce what may be the first bill in the United States to directly address the problem of coerced starvation and eating disorders in the fashion industry to protect the health and well-being of professional models. This bill, California AB 2539, clarified that all modeling agencies should operate under the Talent Agency Act, which provides necessary worker protections for models. This bill also clarified that models are employees of the brands they represent, rather than independent contractors, ensuring that models are granted worker protection rights that all employees have in the U.S. CA AB 2539 was sparked by STRIPED legal research led by Katherine Record, STRIPED Collaborating Mentor, reported in the recent American Journal of Public Health article, Paris thin’: A call to regulate life-threatening starvation of runway models in the U.S. fashion industry.
Unfortunately, despite strong support for the bill among models, their families, and many other organizations and individuals, CA AB 2539 was held in suspense by the California Assembly Appropriations Committee on Friday, May 27, 2016, and so will not be considered for a vote by the full Assembly this year. We would like to thank Assemblymember Marc Levine and his dedicated staff, Model Alliance, National Eating Disorders Association, Nikki DuBose, Cassandra Soltis, and all the advocates for CA AB 2539 for their hard work on this incredibly important legislation. Congratulations on taking the first step towards protecting fashion models in California. While California lawmakers have said no to protecting models for the time being, we will not give up our fight until we achieve labor rights and health and safety standards in the modeling industry.
STRIPED Letter of Support for CA AB 2539
Letter of Support from STRIPED Legal Collaborator Cassandra Soltis
Letter of Support from the California Labor Federation
California AB 1576
In January 2018, California Assembly Member Marc Levine introduced AB 1576 to protect the health of professional fashion models working in California. The bill, which builds on CA AB 2539 from the previous legislative session, addresses the problem of eating disorders and sexual harassment in the fashion industry by requiring talent agencies to provide sexual harassment prevention and health standards training programs to employees, actors, models, and other entertainers .
AB 1576 will not only take a much needed step toward protecting the safety, health, and wellbeing of models, but also will change the messages girls and young women receive about what our society values.
News Update: We are delighted to report that on January 11, 2018, CA AB 1576 passed unanimously and with bipartisan support in the California Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment. The bill will now continue working its way through the California Assembly. Stay tuned for more updates!